


Brittle Glory

by angevin2



Category: Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Creepy Royal Children, Historical, Medieval, Multi, Politics, Pre-Canon, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:36:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angevin2/pseuds/angevin2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kingship really, really messes people up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brittle Glory

**Author's Note:**

> Written for **absinthe_shadow** in the 2009 Histories Ficathon. Thanks to **lareinenoire** for beta-reading, and **aris_tgd** and **commodorified** for moral support.
> 
> I warned for major character death, since it is technically true, but it is _canon_ major character death.

**1\. Westminster, June 1376**

The first time Henry saw Richard after his father's death he was alone in the oratory, sitting on the floor rather than kneeling at a prie-dieu like you were supposed to do in a chapel, and before he could leave Richard turned and saw him and then he was trapped.

"My father is dead," Richard said. He sounded calmer than Henry expected, but Richard never seemed to react to things in the way you'd expect him to. It made talking to him very confusing.

Henry nodded. "I know. I'm sorry."

Henry's mother had died when he was very young, but he didn't remember it, and it probably wasn't really the _same._ Especially if your father was heir to the throne like Richard's had been. He thought for a moment about how he would feel if _his_ father had died.

He realized then that he was a very wicked boy. He did not think he would mind very much at all.

Henry had heard Richard talk about his father before, though; he seemed to venerate him like a saint. Of course he did: everyone did. Indeed, Henry couldn't help wishing that his own father were more like Prince Edward. Except for the whole being-_dead_ part, because he suspected that he would probably be more upset by his father dying if he were like _that._ But Richard seemed to be thinking about the entire situation as if it were a conundrum put to him by his tutor. It made Henry terribly ill at ease.

"I'll be king next, you know," Richard said. "When Grandfather dies."

It was a curiously matter-of-fact statement: he might as well have said that the sun rose in the east. Henry nodded again, for want of anything more fitting to say. Their grandfather was very old -- he had been king for many years before Henry was born, and even before his father was born -- and people were afraid he wouldn't live out the year.

Henry couldn't imagine how frightened he would be if he knew he might become king in the near future, but Richard seemed to bear it -- well, as if he'd been born to it, which after all he more or less _had_ been. He already seemed to have that distance about him, the same kind that Grandfather had, and that Prince Edward had had, and that probably all kings did: like he wasn't really a _person,_ exactly, he was a _king,_ and when he looked at any other person he was always looking down. Henry wondered if other people stopped being real to you when you were king.

"Richard?" he said.

"You should call me 'your Highness,'" Richard said, and Henry felt vaguely sick to his stomach.

***

**2\. London, the Tower, December 1387**

After they have finished dinner Richard takes Anne's hand, gives it a squeeze, and she nods, trying to smile reassuringly. It is difficult: there is little assurance to be found anymore, when his realm has turned against him, the nobility driving his friends from his side. Richard still shudders at the memory of those horrible few hours where it was rumored that Robert had drowned in the frigid Thames, pulled down by his heavy armor while fleeing from battle: the gripping black cold that seized on his heart then has only loosened somewhat since Richard learned that he had merely fled the country.

Anne has been his rock -- as she has ever been. He cannot imagine what would happen if he were ever to lose her. It would be the end of the world.

Later he will fall desperately into her arms, but now he raises her hand to his lips before releasing it, and she withdraws, leaving him alone with his cousin.

Henry turns pale when she leaves: he cannot bear to face Richard alone, though he can do so in her presence, or with the combined strength of Gloucester and Arundel and Warwick as a shield. Richard remembers sparring with him as a child, feigning injury to throw him off his guard. Sir Simon had chided him for it: it was dishonorable, he had said. But it had also _worked,_ and now he is fighting for his life. For his crown, perhaps, but he is not so naive as to think they are anything but inextricable: he knows his great-grandfather died for thinking otherwise, perhaps even until the moment men came to him with a red-hot spit.

He has not even told Anne of the substance of his nightmares.

"Tell me, Henry," he says -- and his voice only shakes a little, for which he is grateful -- "is it worth it, to betray your king, and your cousin, to put Thomas of Woodstock on the throne?"

Henry becomes visibly tense. "Richard, I swear -- " he begins, and Richard feels himself tense up as well, fear giving way to brief yet blinding rage: he is twenty years old, and he has been king for ten years, and if he _is_ to die soon he will be king still until that very moment.

He reminds himself to unclench his fists. "I am still your king," he says, "and you will address me as such."

Henry swallows hard, lowering his eyes. "Of course," he says, adding, after a moment, "your Highness."

Henry is not nearly so good at being unreadable as he clearly thinks, but Richard does not fail to notice that he has, nevertheless, revealed nothing. He presses further: "Or is it someone else you would place on my throne?"

"I don't want to do this," Henry says.

"Then don't," Richard replies. "For God's love" -- then, more softly, and in his desperation he almost means it -- "and mine."

"I wished only to rid the court of...corrupting influences," Henry says, in his own way equally desperate. Richard rises from the table -- Henry stands quickly, nearly overturning his chair -- and draws closer, until they are nearly touching, and Henry has to look up at him. Even in the dim orange glow of a candlelit December evening he can see Henry's face redden.

The lords appellant like to claim that Richard has been bewitched, that he is a foolish besotted youth, that he would believe that black was white, if Robert de Vere said so. They know nothing. He has not been so dazzled, by love or, now, by grief, but that he can see what is right in front of him.

Richard's face is mere inches from Henry's, and he leans even closer as he asks: "Then it is not my place you want, but his?"

Henry does not answer Richard's question that is not really a question at all, but when Richard reaches out and tilts his chin upward his eyes close involuntarily, and open laboriously. Richard hesitates for an instant, lips a hair's-breadth away from those of the man who drove his Robert into exile, and he can feel the room spinning as he anticipates the next moment, imagines Henry's rage, and his own guilt, for his act of whoredom, piercing like swords.

That Robert would surely have understood it is no help at all.

For another instant, though he knows it will do him no good, he considers proceeding in this effort anyway, seized by the compulsion to know what would happen, to see Henry's remaining control shaken. What else has he to lose?

(The answer that comes to him: _everything else._)

The pause is enough to give Henry a chance to escape, and he draws back, bowing awkwardly.

"I beg your pardon," he says, his voice strangely thick. "I cannot tell you the minds of Gloucester and Arundel. I'm sorry -- your Highness." Richard is certain he has not imagined the sting of the last two words.

It is not until after he has dismissed Henry that he allows himself to feel it.

***

**3\. London, September 1399**

Henry Bolingbroke, with the name of _Henry the fourth_ soon to be laid upon him like a leaden cope, wondered what it would be like to ride into London as a _true_ king, and was absolutely certain that he would never know.

The people in the London streets, guildsmen and their wives, apprentices and maidens, laughed and cheered and called his name: _Henry shall be king._ It was as intoxicating as it was absurd: nothing would change for any of them, for what did it matter to the commons who the king was?

A young man in the crowd had thrown a stone at the former king (not yet _the former king_, but what was he now, and what was Henry?) His aim had been good enough to catch Richard across the forehead, and Richard had winced as the blood trickled over his brow, but when his eyes met those of his assailant his gaze was kingly enough to make the boy shrink in awe. The image came unbidden to Henry's mind of Richard as a slender, beautiful youth, facing the arrows of the rebellious peasants with terrifying equanimity, nearly twenty years ago. Henry was certain that no number of years on Richard's throne would grant him even a hint of that self-possession.

It was, perhaps, God's punishment to him, then, for he would have given anything to see as he had always suspected Richard had seen; for it had always seemed to him that for Richard the whole world was simply his mirror, with the same substance and reality as a reflection.

Or perhaps he was the one who'd failed to see past the surface.

He remembered Richard's words to him, years ago: _for God's love and mine._

It was unbearable to think that at one blow he had lost the hope of both.

***

**4\. Pontefract, February 1400**

When Richard was a boy and they placed the crown on his head it felt as heavy as lead.

Five months ago his cousin took it from him, and its lack was heavier than its weight ever was.

Now his reign that has outlived itself is over, and Richard can see his own blood slick and warm on the cold stones; it soaks his hands, his breast, even his forehead, like the oil with which he was anointed, the oil which that blood has washed away.

He was wrong about sinking downwards. Everything is light.


End file.
